First Week: sticky air, birds, beer, and politics

Hi all -

This is my first post to what I hope will be a moderately interesting blog.... I arrived in Accra, Ghana on Sunday midday with a group of UC students- most of us from Berkeley and Santa Cruz. We spent Saturday night in Dubai - though we were all too exhausted to spend any of our previous horizontal sleeping time exploring - despite the excitement of such an over-the-top city. This city has "shopping festivals" and on their promotional video playing constantly on the Emirates flight, we were informed that it is a "luxurious" and "mysterious" land of falconry and designer jewlery. The international terminal was just as pretentious as the tourist videos so we mostly decided that it was a place to enjoy a postcard from, rather than a good spot for 20 something college American students. On to Accra... The air feels like Washington DC in the summertime, most of the time- though today is relatively drier. This means that I don't feel like my clothes are plastered to me, and my little white face is not beat red and shiny with sweat for once. However, I think I'm also becoming acclimated after only a few days. The campus of the University of Ghana is HUGE- and extremely spread out, with some paved, some dirt roads and dirt paths criss-crossing fields in-between residence halls and buildings. The trees are beautiful and filled with giant, white throated birds. Leanne, a student from Davis, and I plan on walking around campus with a botany and bird book- perhaps with adventurers hats and explorer khaki shorts, while the beautifully dressed Ghanaian students roll their eyes and get back to business. All the Americans feel under-dressed, or at least in awe of how good Ghanaians look most of the time. Last night, I had a tasting session of Ghanaian beers - Star, Stone, Gulder, Club (though funny, no one ordered the Guiness) with a large group of the exchange students and some of the dance and drum instructors from our introductory dance/music class. Though I sometimes feel extremely awkward, my favorite orientation activity so far has been the dance class. The instructors are good-humored, accepting and impressive beyond belief. I definitely plan on taking a traditional Ghanaian dance class- and drowning in sweat at least twice a week. In other, more important news, the new President of Ghana, John Atta-Mills, was sworn in today but unfortunately we were unable to attend the inauguration though yesterday we visited the location where it was held. Ghana now has its first female speaker of Parliament as well as Chief Justice. Mills ran as a social democrat, jumping on the Obama "Change" bandwagon. However, one of our lecturers claimed that he has not shown significant tendencies in the past towards this stance. It should be interesting to see where this, as well as our own administration converge and diverge. I am now running out of internet time, but will post again soon, hopefully with photos. Love to all from the University of Ghana, Legon, Accra.